Sunday, October 3, 2010

While we're considering adding lanes to turn a portion of Boylston St. (Rte. 9) into a super-highway, Cambridge is taking a lane out of Galileo Way in Cambridge. Earlier this year, Boston took travel lanes out in and around Kendall Square to make way for bike lanes.

11 comments:

You never break out of the same old mold, do you Sean? You're penchant for comparing apples to oranges just to try to prove a point is truly astounding. You're comparing Galileo Way to route 9? I had to look up exactly where it was. If Cambridge was taking a lane out of Mass. Ave., you might have a point, but I bet there are still more cars travelling on Rte 9, than Mass. Ave across from MIT. So your point is that Newton should be choking down a major thoroughfare because Cambridge is narrowing a well used sidestreet? Do you ever tell the whole truth?

I have mixed feelings about Cambridge's approach to bikes. For me, everything is just ducky already (pretty much), but if you're not an obnoxiously experienced rider, it's not so fun, and that keeps most people in their cars and off of bikes.

If you look at the crowd-sourced Boston Bike Map, imagine you had to get to MIT from the Fresh Pond area. The direct route is Concord (I take this), but it is not even coded as "advanced" (red). There's a recommended path to Harvard, but it is not direct, and includes a bunch of stop signs, and side streets where (when I tried it) cars seem to make a habit of running their stop signs.

If you somehow get to Harvard, the "green" route is along the Charles River (long, shared with joggers, often rumply, sigh). The direct route is Broadway, coded as "red" for advanced cyclists. (The PDW Path looks to me like the Effective Cyclists' poster child for why paths are bad.) Galileo Way is coded blue -- so if you get to MIT, great, but lots of luck getting there. It's fine that they're taking a lane from it, and maybe this is part of a rational lane reduction strategy (if the traffic is not there to justify two lanes, remove one, wherever this is the case), and it might help bikes where it happens, but that's not the same as a coordinated plan to help bikes.

Anon#2 -- "not expanding" is not the same as "choking down". Widening roads does not necessarily increase the end-to-end traffic capacity (for instance, if there are choke points elsewhere), but it does make them less friendly to non-car traffic. We get this with Trapelo Road here in Belmont -- it's very wide because it used to have streetcars on it, but it doesn't actually have the traffic to justify the width. Several bumpout crosswalks were installed, necking the road down to a tight two lanes, and no traffic jams resulted, not even at rush hour (since one of these bumpouts was a stone's through from the elementary school my kids attended, I got to see the lack of jams quite often).

Do please read for comprehension next time, ok? You won't do a very good job of discrediting Sean if you write like an idiot.

Correct, you do an excellent job of discrediting yourself. Newton and the Aldermen appreciate that. That's right, hash marks. If you're turning right, you cross them and stay to the right. Watching out for bicyclists all the time. If you're going straight, you follow the lane and go straight.

Actually, no. At the end of the block, the hashmarks end, there are two lanes again, and the bike lane shifts left, between the two travel lanes.

So, if you're going to turn right at the end of the block, move to the left lane, stay in the lane to the left of the hashmarks until the hashmarks end, then cross over the bike lane into the right-turn lane.

Absolutely. As soon as the bicyclists stop going through red lights, that's when the drivers will follow those markings. Google maps shows a mighty short block. It's a virtual revolution in traffic pattern planning. Read for comprehension... you guys are a riot.

I assume you propose that cyclists not run red lights, is a rhetorical "when pigs fly", and not part of some quid pro quo that I know you cannot deliver on. I don't run red lights, yet I see sloppy and illegal driving all the time. Thus, it is proven that no such "deal" exists.